The past year brought many changes in education in TN, precipitated by the appointment of Dr. Candice McQueen to replace controversial Kevin Huffman. Dr. McQueen, Dean of Education at Lipscomb University, and former teacher, gathered wide-ranging support from Tennessee educators by reaching out immediately to classroom teachers. McQueen’s regular visits to classrooms and her interactions with teachers and students across Tennessee have garnered thoughtful consideration of state department actions and policies and have established her as an educational leader who first and foremost supports teachers. Early in the Commissioner’s tenure, an assessment task force was created to study best practices in student assessment. The task force, which included teacher and school administrators, made 16 recommendations regarding transparency, test reduction, eliminating kindergarten and first grade standardized testing, and test scheduling. Commissioner McQueen facilitated a Standards Recommendation Committee to review and revise the English Language Arts K-12 standards, with multiple opportunities provided for public feedback. The recommendations on the new standards (to replace Common Core) have been presented to the State Board of Education with final adoption anticipated in April 2016. While TN continued to show poor progress in literacy achievement, it appeared that a new era in education had begun. Schools began in earnest to prepare students for the first round of TNReady, a new online state test designed by Measurement, Inc., to replace TCAP. The Commissioner’s winning streak came to an abrupt halt, disrupted by a massive crash of the testing platform on the first day of testing. A decision to return to paper and pencil was greeted with dismay from teachers who had devoted hours and days to acquainting students with the complexity of online exams. The dismay was rapidly followed with anxiety and loud voices protesting the use of TNReady scores for teacher evaluation. Commissioner McQueen has apologized to districts, taking full responsibility for the debacle, noting, “All students deserve a positive testing experience.” Responding to districts requesting that teachers be held harmless, Governor Bill Haslam says this year, only positive scores will only count toward a teacher’s evaluation. Teachers have long mistrusted the quantitative side of teacher evaluations for personnel decisions. This foray into waiving TNReady data reignites long polarizing debate on how to best evaluate teachers.